The training room had gone utterly silent, the kind of silence that felt loud, every ordinary sound, her own breathing, the faint creak of the old floorboards, suddenly enormous in the space between them.
Caden's thumb moved along her cheekbone again, slow, deliberate, and Rhea felt herself lean into it before she'd decided to, some old, careful part of her finally, quietly, standing down.
"Rhea." His voice had dropped into that low register she'd started to recognize as the sound of him losing the argument he always had with himself about wanting things. "Tell me to stop, and I will."
She didn't tell him to stop.
His eyes searched hers for a long moment, silver and dark all at once, giving her every chance to change her mind, and when she didn't, when she only tipped her chin up a fra
